lost connection

The anxiety of preparing to “go live” for real – with people actually counting on me was akin to the 1st time I subbed a yoga class. The difference, was that they first time I was called to sub was about 30 minutes after I taught my final certification test out class. I didn’t have weeks to get hung up on what I would teach or say; I just had to do it. The process of trying to connect (literally to the stream while connecting to the students on the other end) is whole other beast. I feel like it shouldn’t be as hard as it has been. But I don’t know why it always seems to fall short.

My theme for today’s class was actually connection. After 10 minutes of waiting for an image of my practice space to be picked up on my phone and magically appear on my laptop across the room, I was feeling almost helpless. I’d tested over and over and over again. My sequence was set and intentionally simple enough for anyone to join in and flow with us. The problem was that when the connection showed, I closed my laptop as it was behind the stream and seemed like an added distraction. I thought it would throw me off and figured that my son would let me know if I dropped off. My bad, I guess.

I taught my class, oblivious to the people that I supposedly was connecting with. Had I kept an eye on the screen, I would have been able to read the comments, AND I would have seen that the stream was dropped. It’s a bit ironic — but it might take me a bit to find amusement about it. At the moment, I am still disappointed in myself. *sigh* So much for non-judgment.

Can I just say that I miss the old way of teaching? I miss my students. I miss seeing them on their mats in front of me, struggling to learn their names, hearing their breath, watching them move along to my words, and even on that occasion when someone gave a look of confusion so I knew to rephrase my instruction.

Hours ago, after discovering the lost connection, a little too late to make it right, I had resigned to the fact that I should stick to uploading pre-recorded flows to my YouTube channel. I feel comfortable with that; even though I may have to re-record or add voiceover to my videos, I seem to be able to control it better. The problem with giving up on going live is that I fear that if I don’t figure out how to make this online way of teaching work that I will be even more behind the 8-ball once we return to in person teaching again. So…I guess I will keep trying to reconnect.

In the meantime, here is a video which was recorded, edited, with voice over added, then uploaded.